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UNESCO and Berlin 10 Conference in South Africa: call to African Institutions to Sign the Berlin Declaration

From 6-8 November 2012, Stellenbosch University (Republic of South Africa) will host the international Open Access Conference Networked Scholarship in a Networked World: Participation in Open Access. This conference is the tenth in the series of so-called “Berlin-conferences’, that convene leaders in the science, humanities, research, funding, and policy communities around The Berlin Declaration on Open Access to Knowledge in the Sciences and Humanities. This Declaration, adopted in 2002, is widely considered as an important milestone in the Open Access movement.

Berlin 10 is the first of the annual meetings to take place in Africa; Open Access has become a truly global endeavour. It will be the first Berlin Conference in which UNESCO actively participates: two workshops in the pre-conference will be organized with the input of the UNESCO Secretariat and by National UNESCO Commissions:

Publishing journals using Open Journal Systems (OJS)

Open Access Advocacy through Academies of Science and Other National Scientific Organizations

These workshops are being organized as part of UNESCO’s Strategy on to promote Open Access to Scientific Information and research (2012-2019), that was adopted by the General Conference in 2011. Capacity building and upstream policy advise are the two key focuses of this Strategy.

In the run-up to the Conference, Stellenbosch University wishes to invite African institutions to become signatories of the Berlin declaration. By signing the declarations, institutions agree to the principles of the Open Access movement as they are enshrined in the Berlin Declaration. More than 350 institutions worldwide have already taken this step.